


I Arranged the Menu, the Venue, the Seating

by scioscribe



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Marriage, Politics, Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-08
Updated: 2018-02-08
Packaged: 2019-03-15 07:46:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13608804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scioscribe/pseuds/scioscribe
Summary: Different kinds of hunger, different kinds of satisfaction.





	I Arranged the Menu, the Venue, the Seating

**Author's Note:**

  * For [herowndeliverance (atheilen)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/atheilen/gifts).



> I've always wanted to give this ship a try! I hope you like this little bit of chocolate.

Alexander was the first man to ever look at her and see a kindred spirit, like Angelica’s throat that night had glittered with mirrors instead of diamonds.  He understood her _want_ , understood that the rapidity with which she spoke and moved was the only way she had to show how fast she was thinking, the only action that didn’t bust the stays of her gown.  He didn’t compliment her perfume or her hair.  He didn’t compliment her at all, except—it took her longer to realize this, maybe a minute, minute-and-a-half, to Alexander, any comparison to himself is the highest form of flattery.

And he thinks he’s got nothing in common with Thomas Jefferson.

There are times when it’s inconvenient, a trial even, to have a husband who risks missing her and seeing only his own reflection.  But not today.  Hell, no.

“Jefferson wants to host,” Alexander says.  When he’s nervous, he fidgets with his cuffs, as if even after all these years he’s not used to having clothes that fit him properly.  "He bought, like, new china, you know how he is, and if he doesn't show it off to Madison, the world's gonna end, something like that."

Angelica is not letting this meeting happen outside her home, and Alexander knows it: despite messing about with his clothes, he has a little smirk hovering around his mouth.  He’s fond of the prospect that she might wind up flaying Jefferson alive.

Unfortunately, she can’t afford to, not at the moment.  “Convince him your idea is _his_ idea, you're good at that.”

“You sound like Washington.”

She can already see his mind turning on how to do it.  He’s not the kind of man a woman has to write a script for.  He writes so much and talks so much that sometimes she could swear she tastes ink on his lips.

“I could tell him,” Alexander says, “that no peaceable solution has ever been brokered at a single man’s table.  It’s a known thing the food is poorer.”

“Sure,” Angelica says.  “Rub it in that his wife’s dead.  You’ll secure his good favor forever and always.”

“If I lost _you_ , there would not be a home I could enter without happiness acting as salt and my host acting as my tormentor, but, okay, yeah, not ideal.”  He snaps his fingers.  “Our cook.  Nobody cooks better mild, invalid-friendly dishes, I should know.  That gets us Madison, Madison gets us Jefferson.  They’ll want the Potomac, you know.”

She’s used to the way his mind changes horses midstream.  “Nobody in their right mind would want the Potomac.  Except—”

“Except it’s just sitting there.”

“It’s sitting there because it’s swampland that’s never seen a summer go by without a dozen cases of malaria.”

“Well, I can’t sit down with my enemies and plead ill-health for why they should move their choice.  If the Potomac could kill me, they’ll just see that as a bonus.”

It’s pointless to say how ridiculous it is that all these men can acknowledge Alexander’s and Madison’s illnesses to make dinner arrangements but not to make arrangements for the rest of their lives, first and foremost because men are irrational in their pride and secondly because Angelica wouldn’t bring it up either if it were her.  It isn’t weakness, but anything that a malicious eye can mistake for weakness works out in politics to weakness nonetheless.

Here’s the other thing, though: Angelica is pretty damn sure she can out-talk Jefferson and Madison both.  Maybe not Alexander, not consistently—their marriage is a gorgeous perpetual stalemate, exhausting and inspiring—but almost everyone else.  She knows how men talk, and she wants that conversation, but she knows how women talk, too, and no craftswoman ever disrespects a tool she’s been given.  In short, if it comes to it, she can pour honey in Jefferson’s ear and flatter all the swagger out of him until he’s amenable, maybe, to finding a spot on the map she likes, so long as it’s in fucking Virginia.

“Then they lobby for the Potomac,” Angelica says.  “Let them, so long as they bring you the votes.  Who’s to say they’ll win?”

“Mm,” Alexander says.  “You’re so foxy when you scheme.”  He traces the lace on her bodice, making her shiver.  “Then it’s your house and your dinner that will effectively see the debt plan and the establishment of the capital.”

“Excellent,” she says dryly, “when they write the history of the night, I’ll be manifest in the address, should they remember it—Alexander.  I want to be in the room.”

She has not asked this before.  She is not a wife who has to settle for manipulating her husband, who has to have a cat’s-paw for her games in the world; they’re partners and what he does on her behalf, he does knowingly, willingly.  With him, she never has to pretend ignorance or disinterest.  Until now, that has always been enough, all that secondhand influence and domestic straightforwardness, knowing that no more of her will survive than her letters and her hand will never been seen more openly than in the selection of a tablecloth.  But now she wants more.  For him, yeah, but for her too.  For her daughters.

It isn't only that she needs to be sure they won't choose the Potomac River as their landmark.  It isn't only that she needs her husband to live.  She _wants_.  Drift the capital up north, just a little, and who knows what might happen?  There's the glory of never-minding the tablecloth and getting to work on the table itself, etching your name into the wood that's going to support the nation.  She could do it.  She _can_ do it, _they_ can do it.

“Yeah, I wish you could be there,” Alexander says a little absently.

“I’m not wishing, I’m saying.”

“It isn’t done,” he says, but then follows that a moment later, wryly, with, “much as bastard orphans never become Treasury Secretaries.  Love, if it were just convention, we’d bust through it guns blazing.  But it’s practical, too.  Jefferson’s got a streak of bullshit chivalry a mile wide, he won’t talk business with a woman at the table.”

“Then we’ll see to it he does.”

“How?”

“I don’t know,” she says honestly.  “But it’ll happen.  I’d put us up against Jefferson and Madison any day of the week, wouldn’t you?”

He looks at her.  Sometimes, even now, he looks at her like he did when he first saw her in that ballroom, in love with her hunger and whatever he sees in her eyes, whatever’s inside her that sometimes scares her but never seems to scare him.  He raises her hand to his lips and kisses it.

“Against all of Washington, Mrs. Hamilton.”


End file.
